Discussion of the poem. 1. What is the significance of the title and the subtitle?

1. What is the significance of the title and the subtitle? Comment on the interaction of polysemy and antonymy in the words «spring» and «fall». What are the related meanings in which they are opposed to each other?

2. Does «unleaving» suggest anything more than just losing leaves? How is the image implied in the morphological structure of this neologism?

3. Why and how is the childish perception of things contrasted to that of a mature person? For what reason does the poem imply the child may «yet» weep in later years? Is this later sorrow contrasted to the grief she feels now?

4. What emotional effect do the coined words «wanwood» and «leafmeal» have on you?

5. Explain lines 12 and 13. Comment on the syntactic and alliterative pattern of the lines.

6. What is «the blight man was born for»? Discuss the fruitful ambiguity of the word «blight». How has the poem established that Margaret is mourning for herself? Why is the child associated with leaves?

7. Note the rich liquid quality of the vowel rhymes. What lines strike discordant note by harsh rhymes?

ROBERT FROST*

Robert Frost (1875-1963) was born in San-Francisco, California. Yet most of his life he spent in New England, and descended from a long line of New Englanders who lived there since 1632 (1).

His father and mother had been teachers. His father died when Frost was ten. His mother brought her children back to New England to their paternal grandfather in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Here young Frost went to school. In school vacation days from twelve on he worked in shoe shops, in wooden mill and as a farm help. He married at twenty, went to Harvard University in his twenty-second year and left it within two years. After that he taught in country schools, edited a weekly paper and wrote poetry. His grandfather gave him a farm, and he made his living as a farmer for six years. Later he also taught part of the time.

In 1912 he sold his farm and moved his family to live in England. It was in England that this most American of poets was first recognized and published his first books: «A Boy's Will» and «North of Boston».

In 1915 he returned to America to find himself famous and highly praised by the critics who called him the leader of a new era in American poetry.

From this time on his star continued to rise. He was awarded honorary degrees of many universities. Four times he received the Pulitzer Prise for the best book of poetry of the year. He published a great number of collection of poems, many of them with titles showing his attachment to New England: «Mountains Interval» (1916), «New Hampshire» (1923), «A Further Range» (1936). Others reveal in their titles his deep love for nature: «West-Running Brook» (1928), «A Witness Tree» (1942), «In the Clearing» (1962) and others. Although engaged as a professor and lecturing a great deal, he did not sever his ties with land. He owned five farms, all in Vermont, and lived on them from time to time.

Frost's poetry is remarkable for its humane optimism, sincerity, wisdom and wit. The music of his poetry is that of a speaking voice. He writes from personal experience. His tone is conversational and also that of a man speaking to himself, thinking aloud, unaware of any audience. His vocabulary is simple: he rarely uses metaphors or allusions, and yet his poetry is rich in symbols, the imagery and the symbolic element being taken from everyday contact with nature. The significance is often implied. For example the first line of the famous poem «Mending Wall»: «Something there is that doesn't love a wall», may be taken for its face value, as part of the image, but at the same time it implies a protest against barriers between people. Frost's poems are rich in aphorisms. Many of them are placed in the strong position of a conclusion, whereas the first line introduces the image or a symbol. For example the poem entitled «Hyla Brook» (hyla is a kind of frog) begins: «By June our brook's can out of song and speed…» and ends as follows: «We love the things we love for what they are».

The approximation to ordinary speech makes his style, characteristic of a man of the first half of the twentieth century, sound simple enough. But at the same time because of understatement and implication it is also in a way sophisticated or as the poet himself puts it:

It takes all kinds of in- and outdoor schooling

To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

With the years his talent grew in clarity and wisdom, became seasoned in experience but no less emotional:

I would have written of me on my stone

I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

*Biography and questions are borrowed from Arnold I.V., Tarasova V.K. Modern Poetry. Leningrad, 1987, pp. 26-29.